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Study: Distracted Driving Now a Problem in School Zones

October 2017

A new study was released last month highlighting that distracted driving is the now becoming the new problem around school zones. The mobile driver analytics company, Zendrive, captured data from over 2,000 counties across the U.S. last winter and using their “Zendrive School Safety Snapshot”, came up with some surprising results in driver behavior.

Analyzing over 75,000 schools and the roads directly surrounding them, it turns out that drivers are not always paying attention when driving through school zones. This can be a major risk to our children as pedestrian traffic increases, especially around drop-off and pickup times, the chances of injury and/or death goes up as well.

The data isn’t pretty.

We are finding out that 88% of Americans are using their phones while driving and 1 in 3 drivers are practicing unsafe habits during those pickup and drop-off times. As we reported earlier this year, 2016 was the deadliest year in a decade with an estimated 40,000 traffic fatalities and 2015 saw 3,400 fatalities attributed to distracted driving alone. This is starting to become a huge problem.

With this new data, law enforcement now has the information they need to address these problem areas to make our school zones safer. The counties that received the worst grades, such as San Francisco, California, and Dallas County, Texas, are ready to use that information to target bad driver behavior in their communities:

Schools are now back in session and that means more pedestrians on the roads around school zones. Students have a right to commute to school safely and with 94% of crashes attributed to human choice or error, drivers need to pay extra special attention to reduce these unnecessary crashes.